Monday, October 28, 2013

Gordon's Stop Light Drive In

 500 Bailey Rd  
Crystal City, MO
 We've been to Gordon's before, but by 'we' I mean Adam and I. We usually go there when Angel is out of town. We're not sure why, it's just that the first time we went she was out of town so we repeated that behavior.
Angel had never been, ever. So this week, Adam's turn to choose, he asked me what I was in the mood for, I answered "a hamburger."
That may seem like an odd choice, but there's something about me that you may not be aware of. I don't eat hamburgers very often. The last time I had a real hamburger, by that I mean bun, ketchup, mustard, hamburger patty,etc., was in August. The last one before that was in May. So I was kind of craving a good burger. He chose the place, based on his mother's contribution to the conversation: "It has to be a good one." So Adam, almost immediately said: "Got it." and then announced his choice.
Gordon's has been making the same diner fare, burgers and breakfasts, since 1948. It's still an old style diner, not just some place trying to look like one. It's at a busy intersection, thus the 'Stop Light' in the name.
 We had to stop and get cash first, they don't process debit/charge cars. They have a third-party automatic ATM machine, (see what I did there?) and they might take a check, if there's anyone around still writing checks. I'll bet my loyal fan Suzy still writes checks, she seems the type. BTW Suzy got in touch with me last week after I mentioned that I thought she liked Nordic food.
She replied: " While I do enjoy the occasional Swedish meatball, and have even looked for a recipe recently, I do not enjoy anything else typically Nordic.  I hate the cold, the snow and most especially the trak……as in NordicTrak………evil on a pulley.  I cannot fathom smoked and/or pickled fish.  I watched The Vikings series last winter, so I’m up on their cuisine…..looked miserable!!!!"
Well, Suzy's usually a nice person and she may be speaking honestly here, but is it just me, or do we all think she 'doth protest too much'? It's quite okay to be Nordic, or a Nordic-things lover, we don't judge here. As for the 'Vikings' show she mentioned, I loved that show. Yes the food (roots, tree bark, fish, and the occasional captured priest) was kind of gross, as was the climate, the social rules and certainly the general hygiene, but the show itself was awesome. Good enough that I'm currently on the prowl for a fine personal shield maiden. Angel doesn't want the role because she might have to get on a boat.
But I'm pretty sure Suzy still carries a checkbook.
The Food:
Triple
We went for burgers, we got burgers. I opted for the Triple cheeseburger with onions, tomatoes and lettuce, along with fries. For Angel, the double cheeseburger with chili fries and Adam picked the Double Jumbo, with cheese and cheese fries. The Jumbo is topped with slaw and barbecue sauce and is usually served with onions, but Adam instructed them to leave those off.
If you are going to Gordon's for a burger, and you certainly should, remember that a 'burger' doesn't come with anything. If you want cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, etc. you need to tell them that or else you get meat and a bun.
Double, with chili cheese fries.
One of the two young ladies, the one with the dark hair, not the redhead, took our orders and brought us our drinks. Tea, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi.
The tea was fresh-ish, but very weak. (-1 on the PJTea scale) That's okay though, the burgers and fries more than made up for it.
The burger patties are not large or thick, they start out as balls of fresh ground beef that the cook smashes into flatness right on the grill. They are thin around the edges and that chars up nicely. Unlike a fast food burger, which always seem a bit manufactured, these burgers actually tasted fresh and toasty. The lettuce, tomatoes, etc. were all fresh as well. The fries were crunchy and tasted a little sweet, like a freshly cut potato. Angel had chili on hers, an in-house blend. I like chili, I like cheese, but I do not like them on fries. I like my taters crisp, the cheese and chili makes them soggy. Adam and Angel enjoyed theirs though, quite a bit.
Double Jumbo, cheese fries.
My 'Triple' was almost too much. This is the first time I'd gone with three patties, I  thought I was hungrier than usual. I would have been fine with a double. I was really glad I didn't try the Quadzilla, a four patty mega-burger advertised in the big sign on the wall.
Once we were all finished, I polled the family. All I got was "very good" and "good as always" so I dug deeper.
"Better than . . ." I asked. The result was that we all agreed, Gordon's burgers are better than any fast food burger.
Summary:
Maybe it's the simplicity, the lack of anything but meat in the burgers, no flavorings or additives, other than maybe a little salt and pepper. A real, true burger, like our parents used to get before America's burger joints were all but swept away by the fast food franchises.
The price was right, twenty seven dollars, cash, for three large and fantastic burger meals.
We highly recommend this little place, so if you happen to be in the area, make this a destination. If you're not real hungry, get a single, they are not large at all. If you are famished or have a death wish, order the Quadzilla. Just don't forget to bring cash.


Epilogue:
After we ate, Angel was driving and turned the wrong direction onto the street. Or so I thought. Actually there was an evil plan afoot, a conspiracy, no less. I assumed she was going to turn around, but no. She turned into the parking lot of (cue creepy 'Psycho' shower-stabby music) a shoe store!!! 
I don't mind shoe stores, if I am  looking for shoes. I wasn't, they were, both of them. There's nothing duller for an average guy than waiting while someone else shops for shoes. I walked to two other stores in the vicinity, Peebles, where I could at least see if they had a sale on shirts, they didn't, that ate up about five minutes, and Dollar General because it was nearby and they've at least got a wide variety of useless cheap crap I don't really need. They still weren't done looking at shoes. Dante sort of predicted waiting for someone to shop for shoes in his "Divine Comedy", somewhere between the first and second realm.
I have shoes. My work shoes, which I got mail-order, (my feet/shoe size have been the same since high school) my sneakers, $12  at Walmart, and a pair of twenty+ year old, steel-toed Doc Martins (six eyelet)  that I bought at a surplus/overstock store. I wear the Doc Martins when I'm doing manly stuff outside. They have a hard, heavy treaded sole, are hefty, yet comfy. That they've lasted over twenty years probably speaks to how well they were made, or maybe how seldom I actually do manly stuff outside. I also have a pair of simple black dress shoes, for interviews, funerals, etc. They are cheap, but shiny, I only wear them every other year or so.
Finally Angel and Adam finished and met me in DG. I had selected a two-pack of bubble wrap-lined shipping envelopes ($1.50)  and was eyeing a small nutcracker. 'Tis the season, right?  I got the nutcracker, paid full price ($4) which I hardly ever do. Unique ones are getting harder and harder to find at post-season sales though. I'll set up the entire collection after Thanksgiving and post a 'find the new one' photo, which has become a minor tradition.
That shoe store thing though, please, please ladies, don't behave like my wife!  If you need shoes, go get shoes, take all the time you want, just leave me out of it!





Stop Light Drive In on Urbanspoon



Monday, October 21, 2013

Oriental Buffet

774 S. Truman Rd.
 Crystal City, Mo.

 Once Angel gets 'Chinese Food' in her head, the discussion is pretty much over. It's a craving of a strength like none other, much like the shaved ice she craved back when she was gestating. Also, it rarely gets objected to anyhow, we like us some good Chinese food, especially a buffet. We like the Oriental Buffet just fine. It's not the best in the world, or the country, the state or even the region, but it is closer than any other decent place. There is a change in the wind though, one that motivated us to go to OB as soon as possible.
A few months back Ryan's Steak House and Buffet abruptly shut its doors. A few weeks later there was an announcement that Hibachi Grill was going to build a buffet in Ryan's massive building. There are even banners out, flapping in the wind on the hill above Highway A. The old Ryan's location is less than a half mile from the Oriental Buffet.
There are a lot of  Hibachi Grills in the region, even one down in Springfield, the Queen City of the Ozarks. All Hibachi grills are pretty much exactly alike. It is not a franchise  though, it's more of a business model. Each one, though independently owned and operated, is almost identical to the others. First they are HUGE. They offer traditional Chinese buffet items, and sushi, and a Mongolian Barbecue area. The food there is pretty good and the variety is mind blowing. They are the big-box store version of the Chinese buffet.
We are a little worried about the smaller place, the OB. Will they be able to survive the new big Bertha literally in it's very shadow? I don't know. But we thought we'd go to OB now, just in case it got swallowed up.
The Chinese invented lots of things that other cultures have adopted as their own. Pasta, paper, gun powder, the wooden coffin, paper currency, the fire drill, to name a few. They did not invent the buffet.
You'll never guess who did.... go ahead, guess!
Annnnnd, you're wrong. The correct answer is 'Sweden'. The Swedish also invented ABBA. So they are plenty clever people, those pale and chilly Swedes. The word smorgasbord is Swedish in origin, and described an open table of food and adult beverages, a lot of adult beverages, popular starting in the 1600's. The rest of Europe picked up on the Swedish sensation, the smorgasbord, not ABBA, or 'side board' aka 'buffet' (a French word for the table on which the food and beverages were served)  in the 1800's as railroads started connecting all those little unimportant and snooty European countries and cities. Feeding travelers in this manner was much more efficient than seating them all, cooking for and then waiting on them individually.*
I've never been to a Swedish Buffet though, have you? I have had the little gravy covered meatballs they serve at Ikea, but not in buffet form. I'm not sure what would even be on a Swedish buffet, maybe those meatballs, several kinds of disgusting dried and salted or fermented fish, like their gravlax, and maybe some potato soup and lingonberry jam. Hmmm.  I think the American palette would largely prefer Chinese. Except for maybe my loyal fan Suzi. I think she swings toward more Nordic tastes.
So even though the Chinese did not invent the buffet, nor ABBA, they did perfect the former. Sure they had to fuss with it a little to suit the fickle American tastes, but they have done a fine job at that. What they did was to Americanize some of their own dishes. By that I mean they wrapped it in dough or batter and deep fried or pan fried nearly everything. You haven't noticed that? Silly, gullible Americans.
Chinese food, wontons, rangoons, egg rolls, dozens of different kinds of chicken and pork, (even their rice is fried) offered in an all-you-can-eat, heart clogging buffet, pretty much indistinguishable from carnival food.
But man, is it tasty! Just don't kid yourself that it's somehow healthier than a burger with fries, it's certainly not.
The Place:
A simple, clean and adequately sized place in a strip mall. It is decorated with the requisite jade objects and bright colors. The overhead music was too loud as well as awful. I'm not sure of the name for the genre. It started with 'Sealed With a Kiss' that terrible, dirge-like, un-killable and ubiquitous prom song from the early 70's. Followed by a female cover of Simon and Garfunkel's  'Scarborough Fair' ( 'Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.' ) and the Carpenter's 'Yesterday Once More' ("Every sha-la-la-la, Every wo-o-wo-o, still shines, Every shing-a-ling-a-ling, that they're startin' to sing's, so fine.")  Arrrrgh!
The only good thing possible about music like this was that back in High School it gave you a chance to thoroughly grope your date's soft and round parts during what was known as a 'slow-dance'. Slow dancing in high school is really just making out in public while clumsily swaying from foot to foot. If it were actually dancing we'd see it on DWTS, wouldn't we?
The more I think of it, pretty much all dancing is sexual, some of it, like the Tango, even overtly so. But if that's what it takes for a guy to be able to legally feel up a girl, then so be it. My general observation is that women really, really don't like touching, or being touched by men. That's been my experience anyhow. Which is sad really, because anyone who really knows me, knows that I'm a cuddler.
The Food:
It's a buffet. they offer scores, maybe hundreds of items, mostly breaded, dough wrapped and fried. Everyone's got their own favorites, I got mine.
We were escorted to a table, we ordered our drinks without even sitting down, then ran toward the lines. Usually I sample lots of things, I decided not to this night. I went straight to the known likes. Fried rice, fried noodles, three kinds of breaded fried chicken, (different spiciness levels)  rangoons, pan fried pepper steak and some 'butter shrimp' which were the only non-fried items on my plate.
Angel did pretty much the same, but just to be ornery, added some green things, broccoli and asparagus.(blech!) Adam filled his plate with sweet and sour chicken, breaded and deep fried chicken nuggets covered in a neon-red sauce.
We all made second runs, my next and final plate though only sported the seventh best dessert mash-up in the world, banana pudding and bananas covered in that mysterious, viscous red sauce found only at Chinese buffets.
I love Chinese food, even though little of the stuff I like is authentic Chinese. I've tried actual Chinese food, it's awful. Fish heads, tree bark and pickled pigs eyes, no thanks. Give me some of that carnival food. They even offer chicken on a stick. What could be more American than food on a stick?
Summary:
"Perfectly acceptable." I declared. Adam said he completely agreed. Angel added "Very filling"  which it is, because it's mostly breaded and fried, like funnel cake and corn dogs.
The price was a very reasonable thirty four dollars, not bad at all for all you can eat.
I have no idea how this perfectly adequate and nice little place will fare once the monster on the hill opens. I hope they continue to do okay, but my intuition says they will not. Hibachi Grill is a mega-plex of Chinese food. They offer more, if not necessarily better. They are very efficient, clean, inexpensive and well staffed. The little guys nearby may not stand a chance.
Oh, the tea. It was awful, it always is, weak, bland, tasteless. I'll give it a -3 on the PJTea scale



_____________________
* The author tried to contact a Swedish authority, Agnetha Faltskog, also know as the blonde chick from ABBA, for verification of this information. Unfortunately, she has yet to respond to the hundreds of calls and letters I've sent over the years.


Oriental Buffet on Urbanspoon

Monday, October 14, 2013

Scotties Pub House

1235 Main
Imperial, Mo
http://scottiespubhouse.com/find.htm

Yes, it was stupid.
Earlier in the week a friend from work suggested this place, told me he had a great sandwich there. I'd not heard of it, but he said it used to be something else. I suggested it to the family, they looked at  the web site and said sure.
That was earlier in the week. Before we knew what that would mean.
We've been to many 'sports' bars/pubs and that is normally not a problem. This time it was, and I didn't realize it until we'd found a parking space and realized the place was crowded. "Must be popular." someone said. As we approached the door it dawned on me.
Who doesn't love to meet up with a bunch of happy, excited  friends at a big sports bar to drink and cheer for the local professional baseball team, sweeping its way through the post-season? Loud, frequent hooping and hollering, beer, lots of beer, high fives, and the roar of the twenty-odd TV's all cranked up to max volume.
Me, that's who doesn't love it.
We arrived just as the TV showed that the Cardinals were ahead of the Dodgers by one touchdown in the bottom of the seventh quarter, or whatever the correct sports-related numbers are.
Sure, I like it when the Cardinals win in the post season, everybody at work seems to be in a better mood.
Anyone who knows me at all though knows that I do not like crowds, noise, and can just barely work up a tepid interest in sports of any kind. I realize I'm in a minority about most of those things. I tend to try to avoid  all of them.
But we were screwed.
Sure enough the place was packed, a lot of drinking had occurred before we even got there, and the noise, from the crowd and the TV's was deafening. We also had a twenty minute wait for 'first available' seating.
The Place:
Big, dark, loud, smokey. I didn't pay much attention to the decor, except for the vast number of enormous flat screens on the wall. Edge to edge, surrounding all the separate areas. In the area we were finally seated in I stopped counting after fifteen TV's.
We were seated side by side at a sort of center bar, doubling as a room-divider. In front of us, in fact in front of everyone, no matter where they sat, the Cardinals played at their best.
Nate showed up and asked for our drink orders.
The Food:
I, of course, ordered tea. Angel and Adam chose Pepsi products. Everyone else around us had beer, lots of beer, buckets of ice holding bottles of beer. I could barely hear Nate, he didn't seem to be struggling with the din at all.
When he returned with our drinks we'd had plenty of time to scan the menu. Angel asked for the wings as an appetizer, I didn't mind, but didn't care either. I don't usually like hot wings at sports bars.
I knew it was risky, but since this was an Irish (U.K.) themed sports bar, a 'pub' no less, I ordered the fish and chips.
Angel changed her mind a dozen times, decided she wasn't real hungry so she ordered the Beer Cheese Soup and a Cob Salad. Adam went for the Sourdough Burger.
Nate hustled off and we were left watching the ballgame again. It was too loud to conversate, so we just watched. It was down to the last few innings, a heavy pitching battle in a one point game.
I don't recall how long things took to get to the table, the noise was distorting time and space. The wings arrived, I touched one and licked my finger. The taste was pretty good until the heat kicked in. I was satisfied. The wings weren't exactly flamethrowers, but there was definitely enough heat that I knew my delicate system would violently reject any sizable portion.
Adam and Angel went about them merrily though.
Her soup arrived pretty soon. A small bowl of thick, cheesy, bacon-sprinkled, creamy soup. There were also two tater tots in it. Yeah, tater tots.
I tasted it, thought it was pretty good. Angel agreed and lapped it down pretty quickly.
Soon enough, the main courses arrived.
My plate had more stuff on it that I really wanted to eat, but it was a standard order. The chips were actually house-made potato chips, which indicated that this place might not be aware that 'chips' in the U.K. are actually fries. The Brits refer to what we call potato chips as crisps. The British, and since they were conquered several times by them, the Irish as well, have really butchered up the English language. Anyway, when I want fish and chips I want fries.
Fish and 'Crisps.'
There was also a thick slice of un-toasted white bread, a small bowl of slaw, a small bowl of applesauce, and a ramekin of tartar sauce. I started by dousing the fish with the Nate-provided malt vinegar. I tasted the slaw....  very, very vinegary. Angel tasted it and sad it was like bread and butter pickles, which explains why I didn't really care for it. It wasn't nasty, but it was a lot more sour than I like my slaw to be.
The chips were crunchy, but since I'd geared up for fries, I didn't eat very many of them. The applesauce was sweet and fresh, but I am no expert. I'm pretty sure the last time I had applesauce was out of a baby food jar while feeding a baby, back in the 70's or 80's. So I tasted the applesauce and pushed it aside. I never did figure out the point of the bread.
Yeah, that's a 'salad'
The fish itself was okay. Once again I've had good fish and chips. Served as fish and chips the fish should have a crispy coating, usually thick. These were more like fish egg rolls, the coating was that thin. And the texture was like that of an egg roll, an egg roll that had been reheated in a microwave. The moisture inside the fish softened the coating enough that there was no crunch. It went limp and in many places slid off the fish. As for the taste, well, there's not much to say. It didn't have very much. Neither the fish nor the batter had much of a taste at all, so I ended up dipping it into the tartar sauce, something that is only required if the fish, breading and malt vinegar doesn't pump the taste up enough on their own. The fish was cooked well, moist and flaky, but since it didn't crunch, it was just fish. The chops didn't have a lot of taste either, not even salted enough, Angel noticed that.
Her salad was enormous. Lots of salad toppings, ham, peppers, eggs, tomatoes, other meats, and a relatively tiny portion of lettuce. She did get a soft pretzel stick with it though, and it was pretty good.
Sourdough Burger
I couldn't tell what Adam thought of his burger, since we couldn't hear each other. He only ate about half of it though.
The Cardinals finally struck out the last Dodger, the crowd went wild, and the pub decided to pump up the volume on their sound system even more. A waitress cam up to us and said that since the Cardinals had won they were offering something for three dollars, I couldn't hear what it was. At this point though it might have been a Ferrari and I would have still turned it down. I was starting to suffer long-term calm-damage from the incessant onslaught of noise. I just wanted to leave.
I finished my fish, about ten chips and three or four fork-fulls of the slaw, I was done. I couldn't tell if I was still hungry or not, my brain was too obsessed with finding and utilizing an exit.
Summary:
We paid up and left as quickly as we could. Nate did a splendid job considering the war zone we were in. The tab came in at fifty two bucks and change. Not too bad considering it covered three meals and an appetizer. Too bad the food wasn't all that great. The tea was pretty good; clear, fresh, an easy +3.
The food wasn't bad, but as we got into the SUV and chatted about it, even though my ears were ringing and a headache had kicked in, we all pretty much said the same thing. Adam's burger was plain. Not tasty, more like cooked ground beef with out any further effort.
The cob salad was huge, and since nothing had recipes or ingredients, it was just piles of stuff and the only thing Angel could say was that there sure wasn't much salad (lettuce) in her salad.
I usually don't order Fish and Chips in places that don't boast about their Fish and Chips. this night's meal was exactly why. It just wasn't up to my understanding of the dish and expectations for it.
So maybe we all ordered incorrectly. Maybe we could go back and try something else.... nah, we won't be doing that. None of us were really happy with what we had, the place was waaaaay too loud, so why would we want to go back?
If you like loud, smokey, really busy place that makes mediocre, almost bland food, this is a place for you to try. It was really busy, really loud, really smokey. . . Everyone but us seemed to be having a great time, but we just couldn't wait to get out of there.





Scottie's Pub House on Urbanspoon






Monday, October 7, 2013

Los Portales

201 Main St.
Hillsboro, Mo.


Angel was out of town, yet again. Her and her training associate, Diana, took off for Elgin Illinois on Friday, some sort of canine professional's seminar. She told me what it was but I don't recall paying attention at the time. Elgin is Northwest of Chicago, which I have learned is also in Illinois.  I used to know someone from there, but that was a long time ago.
Adam had worked some earlier in the day but was home in time for our regular outing. Up until we left the house we still hadn't decided where to go. I mentioned maybe something Mexican, he agreed. That meant, without need for further discussion, Los Portales.
The Place:
By best possible definition, LP is a dive. The building is old, the decor is rough and simple, the floors lean, the tile on the floors is cheap, and many of the furnishing do not match. It's just the kind of place you'd expect would serve excellent Mexican food.
The food there is authentic, it says so right on the sign. We've been there fairly often, it is close to home and  right on Main street.
A lot of people go there for their drinks. On this early evening there were already three or four ladies listing to port side, clutching bright yellow, fruity looking concoctions in massive goblets at the bar.
There's a smoking section by the bar that you have to go through before you get to the second-hand smoking section. Like I said, it's a dive.
We were greeted and then seated at a booth at a window that fronted Main street. A few other tables were loaded with locals. I've lived here long enough now that I had to carefully scan the room to see if I knew anyone. It's a popular place and many of the town's movers and shakers frequent the place.
A member of the purple-shirted wait staff brought us menus and the obligatory chips and salsa. LP's chips and salsa are pretty good, the salsa is not too hot, but it will eventually open up the sinuses.
I looked around the room, soaking in the atmosphere. Overhead the music system played authentic Mexican music, soulful, pleading songs, that sucked you in even though the words were undecipherable. He may have been singing about a lost love, a dying pet, a lonely existence, or he may have just been lamenting a blown piston in his pickup truck, I couldn't tell, but I was certain that it made the poor man hurt. The passion was intense, real and personal.
Mounted on one wall was a coat rack. Stuffed in the top of it were several gaudy sombreros. I told Adam that I imagined that on more formal occasions that if a patron violated the dress code and came in without a sombrero, that these were the loaners, like that box of ugly ties fancy restaurants keep on hand.
He suggested in reply that they belonged to the staff. He laughed, he imagined them greeting each other with a boisterous "Buenos dias!" as they removed their bright serapes and big hats in preparation to begin the days work.
I told him that sort of thing might be considered racist.
The staff is, unmistakably, mostly Mexican. I see this as a huge plus. I thought about Angel in Elgin. I wondered if there were any authentic Mexican or Mexican restaurants way up there. I don't know much about Elgin, but I sincerely doubt that they are nearly as cosmopolitan as Hillsboro. Their loss.
I did read somewhere that Elgin has a large Laotian community. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but it can't be as good as authentic Mexican. I mean, when't the last time you heard anyone say "Hey let's go to that nice little Laotian restaurant!"
About the only thing I know about Laos is that we may or may not have accidentally bombed them during that messy Viet Nam thing. I don't know if they still hold that against us. I'm just glad we never bombed Mexico.
The Food:
It really doesn't matter what you order here. Everything mostly has the same ingredients. The difference lies in the way it gets served up. Enchiladas, tacos, burritos, fajitas, it's all got the same stuff available to be stuffed into them. I prefer chicken enchiladas though. I like the red sauce that tops them. I also like refried beans and rice. So that's what I ordered, otherwise known as Combo #1.
Adam asked for #11, two tacos and an enchilada. Beef in the enchilada, chicken in the tacos. There was something on the side as well, though neither of us can remember what it was called.
There's never a long wait at LP's. Since everything is just a variation on basic ingredients, it's a matter of plating it up more than anything. Five minutes, maybe, and the food arrived. Adam's two tacos took up their own plate. they didn't look at all like Taco Bell tacos, which is good since Taco Bell is basically crap.
My enchiladas swam in the same plate with the beans and the rice, just the way I like it. Generous helpings of white cheese, spicy red sauce, mmmmmm...
I chopped up the enchiladas and let chaos ensue, all the bits mixing together beautifully.
The sauce was excellent, a little, but not too spicy, the chicken still tender and moist, the beans are about the best I've had.
This isn't fancy food. This is working person food. No pretense no garnish, no exotic ingredients or fancy plating. It's hard to compare this to a great steak dinner or a complex pasta/seafood offering. But for what it is, and when it is what you are craving, Los Portales gets it all right.
Just look at those tacos, thick crispy shells, plenty of white cheese. Even the chips and salsa are amazing.
I cleaned my plate, enjoying every bite. There may be better Mexican food somewhere, but i don't know how.
Summary:
Yeah, it's good. It's also cheap. Adam and I stuffed ourselves, enjoyed every bit of it, and it only set us back eighteen dollars and eighty five cents. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, the tea. My expectations were low. The worst as I can say is that I've had better and I've certainly had worse, which means for all intents and purposes it ranks on the PJTea scale about in the middle. I'm going to give it a +.25 though since the tea came in a larger tumbler than at Pizza Junction. It's only fair.
Hillsboro is not much of a destination town, well unless you have a court date, so I don't expect a lot of out of towners to go there. Too bad, you'd probably really like it, especially if you also like fruity rum or tequila drinks.
While there, Adam and I toasted my oldest son Matthew. He couldn't join us because he lives in Tempe, Arizona. It was his birthday though and what with him living in a state that loves authentic Mexican stuff, (except for many of the authentic Mexicans) I'm sure he would have wanted to join us.


Los Portales‎ on Urbanspoon